Renovation

Sómastaðir, in Reyðarfjörður

You might recognize this house if you've been reading Iceland Eyes for a while. It's the one my great-grandfather, Hans Beck, built, and where my grandmother (one of his 23 children) was born (click on the link to read more about its history).


I  last wrote about in 2006 when it was still in disrepair, but now I'm happy to say it's been renovated to an amazingly fine degree by the National Museum of Iceland Historic Buildings Collection with funding from Alcoa, the aluminum company that has erected a smelter literally just across the street from the house, on a long thin plot of land that dips down from the road into the fjord below. Thankfully, the smelter is mostly hidden by the sloping landscape, and if you stand with your back to it you can almost imagine you're back in 1913 when my amma, Ásta Beck, was born.

And once again, one of the reasons I love blogging is that I just discovered this American Forests site detailing a reforestation project for the hillside behind the house, on Sómastaðafjall!

It was my mother, Ásthildur Brynjófsdóttir Roff's, birthday present to herself to go back to Reyðarfjörður with my father, my children and me and see what's been done with the old place. Though she was also born in the area, it was in the town proper, in an old corrugated-iron clad timber house named Tunga. We went there, and also in to Eskifjörður, and to the old Helgustaðir spar-stone mine which the SEEDS volunteer project worked on in 2009. They did a wonderful job of making the area visitor-friendly. Definitely visit their link to learn about spar-stone, or transparent calcite, which is littered all about the hillside mine area. And if you've seen the History Channel's Vikings series, you'll recall Ragnar using it the second episode to navigate to England!

We had a wonderful visit out east, and I HIGHLY recommend the region to travelers. It's one of the oldest settled areas in the country, with the second oldest geology. The people are kind, the landscape stunning, and the weather generally much better (or at least more specific) than in the south and west. It took me ten hours to drive home from Egilstaðir to Reykajvik in one shot, which I had to do, though I would of course recommend stopping and staying as much as possible along the way :+)

Flow Those Comments on Down

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This pretty stream flows down to the main street, Strandgata, in Eskifjörður, in East Iceland. As you can see at the linked site, this little fishing town in very long and skinny, skirting as it does the base of a fine mountain that looms over the fjord below.

As I've written of before, my grandmother grew up in Reyðafjörður just to the south of this town, in the house shown in this post from last summer's trip around the island. During the first part of June Reyðafjörður is going to be turned into a carnival, sponsored by Alcoa to celebrate the grand opening of their new aluminum plant. Should be sight to see. My mother is taking my grandmother, Ásta Beck, to visit the little house her father built, and that she was born in 93 years ago, right around the same time, but I don't think they'll be in town for the actual celebration. That might be a good thing...

If you've gotten this far in reading this post I'd love to ask you to quickly drop a word or two of comment before you go. This site is not controversial and doesn't necessarily beg conversation, but I recently checked Google Analytics to see how many visitors I've been getting (something I haven't done in almost a year) and I was blown away by how many people stop by (well into the four digits per month!) It would be a blast to see how many of you can take a minute to just write a quick hi! or somesuch (I promise I'm not fishing for complements.) And be sure to leave your own web address if you're not with Blogger so that people can check out your site too...Thanks in advance!

Upcoming post: Stay tuned for the next episode of Crazy Icelandic Names. Here's a sample of what you can look forward to!